AD Agencies
GroupM partners LINE to reach APAC consumers
MUMBAI: GroupM has inked a media partnership across Asia Pacific with LINE Corporation of Japan.
LINE is a free call and messaging app, which is rapidly expanding its global user base with 212 million monthly active users, mostly in the Asia Pacific market in countries such as Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia.
The multifaceted agreement commences immediately and is one of many new media partnerships GroupM is establishing to support clients in the region.
LINE allows brands to communicate with audiences safely in real time. LINE is an instant smartphone messenger that users check constantly through the day, enabling brands to make timely, relevant outreach. Because LINE is a closed social networking service where users communicate mostly with personal acquaintances, it also serves as an intimate source of reliable information for the user and a trustworthy environment for brands. Advertisers on LINE additionally benefit from strict policies around user eligibility which ensure no fake accounts exist.
“Clients look to us for the most innovative ways to reach their audiences across Asia Pacific. LINE is one of the fastest-growing natively developed social media platforms in Asia and is undeniably an important new vehicle for consumer engagement. Our agencies are already helping clients to leverage the platform within media plans, and we engineered this partnership to make LINE’s digital products work harder for their brands,” said GroupM Asia Pacific CEO Mark Patterson.
The deal offers clients of GroupM agencies a competitive advantage through efficient pricing, quick access to new advertising products and specialised training to support appropriate implementation based on unique platform characteristics and user preferences.
“Today, it is a worldwide trend to utilise messenger apps for consumer communications and customer relationship management, connecting brands with their audiences. Through this partnership with GroupM, we will connect even more brands with consumers. Through our LINE Training Sessions, we’ll also help instruct the most effective marketing solutions for LINE’s unique communication environment and establish market-leading benchmarks,” added LINE Corp SVP, head of corporate sales Sintaro Tabata.
“Online consumers around the world – including those in APAC – have shown a marked preference for platforms and services they find trustworthy. LINE’s closed nature appeals to consumers who favor a more private social networking experience, and by connecting reliable brands with users in this implicitly trusted setting, GroupM and LINE will help our clients reach users in a fun, yet unobtrusive manner,” said GroupM Asia Pacific deputy head of trading Nick Bins.
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
